


Two heads are spookier than one

by AceofHarts



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Elementary School, Fluff, Halloween, M/M, Trick or Treating, again not actually IN the school they're just that age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceofHarts/pseuds/AceofHarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven-year-old Eren is upset because he has no costume ready for Halloween; Armin has a way to fix that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two heads are spookier than one

            Midway through October, Carla Jaeger had said to her son, ‘Be sure you think of a costume for Halloween, so we can get it ready for you.’ Eren had immediately taken his thick primary pencils and an enormous stack of paper, and with great ceremony had set down as many ideas as possible, from vampire right down to juice box. When he’d taken this important document back to his mother, she’d laughed a bit and brushed her hair out of her face and asked whether he’d be able to narrow it down before Halloween.

            Eren had tried. But he was seven years old, and he could not imagine a more enormous or weighty life decision. He’d been unable to settle on any one idea, and then this week Carla had been called in to work the night shift for an injured co-worker. There’d just been no time anymore.

            Now here Eren was on Halloween, sitting on the porch steps with his chin resting on his hands. He  looked with dull, half-closed eyes at the other kids scurrying about on the sidewalk, most with one hand tugging at a parent’s or sibling’s, and the other gripping a bag full of candy. The whole street was lit up with orange and green—glowing all the brighter as the sun drifted down towards the end of the street. It was a surprisingly warm evening, even though the breeze was cool and chasing dead leaves around trick-or-treaters’ ankles.

            It would have been the perfect Halloween.

            Grisha had said Eren could still go out without a costume, but Eren was old enough to know that a lot of the neighbourhood adults would withhold candy from a child they didn’t think was enthusiastic enough. When Eren had said, “NO I CAN’T,” Grisha had feared a repeat of Eren’s pre-kindergarten tantrums. He’d offered to sacrifice a bed sheet for a ghost costume.

            “Ghosts are boring!”, Eren had said, and out onto the porch he had stormed. He hadn’t so much as glanced back at the house ever since. He didn’t _want_ to see the jack o’lantern whose sloppy grin he'd mapped out in marker, or the fake cobwebs his mother had strung around the porch columns. He didn’t want to see the plastic skeleton hanging on the door. What he wanted to see, and _all_ he wanted to see, was his mother’s car screeching up to the curb, and her leaping out with some perfect costume slung over her arm.

            But he’d been out here for half an hour waiting for it to happen, and it was getting difficult to sustain that kind of hope. Eren dropped his forehead against his folded arms. Every now and then a gaggle of children would race up the steps, near enough to him that he sometimes got thwacked by an inadvertent robe or tail or broomstick. 

            Not all the costumes the neighbour kids wore were impressive. Eren knew very well he  _could_ have gone with some slapdash costume. He had a striped shirt, and there was no shortage of sticks around to be used as swords; he could manage a pirate, probably. It was just that this was Halloween, which he loved, and he did not know how to do things halfway. If he made himself go out in a costume he hated he'd be even sulkier than he was now. He might well end up hurling his bag of candy into the bushes. Not having any in the first place seemed like a better outcome. Besides, the big bowl they filled for trick-or-treaters might not be totally empty by the time the night was through. There'd be enough to get on with.   

            He was just deciding that maybe he had better go inside when one approaching set of footsteps stopped, rather than rush up the wooden porch steps and make a beeline for the front door. Eren lifted his head and found a short, colourful ghost standing before him. The traditional white bedsheet had been replaced by a pastel floral one, though the typical eye holes remained in place. One small pink hand held onto the matching pillowcase, and the other lifted up to tug the sheet so that the holes more properly revealed a pair of very large, very blue eyes.

            “Aren’t you going?”, the ghost asked. Eren looked again at the pillowcase. It was a bit bunched up from being carried, but not at all lumpy with candy already gathered. Eren’s best friend had kept his word. They’d had a brief tactical meeting during recess last week and decided that whoever was ready first would go and pick the other one up, foregoing any candy along the route. It wasn’t any fun without a friend there, they'd agreed.

            “No,” Eren said. Down at the edge of the property, just on the other side of the fence, Armin’s grandfather was waiting patiently. “You should just go, Armin.” Armin's head gave a sympathetic tilt. 

            “Did you get in trouble at dinner again? My mom says vegetables are really important, so I think you should probably actually eat them sometimes.” He started towards the steps. “I’ll tell your mom you really really have been good in math this week, though—”

            “She’s not home.” Armin stopped. “I don’t have a costume.”

            “You’re not in trouble?” Eren shook his head. Armin’s hand emerged again, this time so that he could prop the sheet up on his arm and peer out from under it at his friend.

            At least, that was what Eren thought he was doing. When he stayed standing like that for second after second, Eren had to wonder.

            Providing helpful explanations for everything, from subtraction to phonics to plants, was one of the great joys of Armin’s life. Eren’s confused expression had become a cue for Armin to go on, since Eren was one of the few people in their grade who did not routinely tell him to shut up.

            “You can fit under here too,” Armin said. “With two heads we’ll be way scarier anyway. It’ll be hard to see because of the eye holes, but we can still—”

            There was a soft _thump_ as Eren collided with him. He tugged the sheet back down again to cover them, only to then lift his arms up and go lurching up onto the porch and into the house like some confused flowery zombie who’d recently gotten the better of a clothesline.

            “DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD—!” Grisha Jaeger gave the quietest little ‘weh’ sound and nearly dropped the bowl of candy he’d been refilling. “DAD I’M GONNA GO WITH ARMIN NOW BYE—”

            It wasn’t until he’d run back out on the porch again that he realized that Armin was hanging onto the back of his shirt and being more or less dragged. Eren stopped so that Armin could find his feet again.

            "Ahh, sorry Armin."

            "It's okay." Eren flapped around with both hands in the dim, detergent-smelling folds of cotton until he found Armin’s hand. He held onto it. His mother was always saying it was more polite than just clinging onto whatever limb or pair of shoulders was nearest. 

            “Okay!”, he said. “Oh, wait, I need a bag—”

            “We can share,” Armin said.

            “What if they only give us half the candy, though…?”

            “We’ll both hold it. They’ll know it’s two people.”

            “And if not we’ll just—” Eren lifted his arms again so that the sheet billowed in what he felt was an intimidating way. “RAAARGHGHGHGAAAAA!! And they’ll be so scared they drop the candy and run. And we’ll take it.”

            “Only our share.”

            “Right. But like, the good stuff, though.”

            They both started towards the porch steps at the same time, but the eye-holes—which earlier had been resting more or less in front of Eren’s face—had become displaced. The two boys wound up tangling their feet and wobbling down the front steps rather than making the grand entrance to trick-or-treating they might have wished for.

            “Right,” Armin said, “we can’t see… We should take turns?”

            “You can go first,” Eren said.

            “Really? You can go…”

            Eren shook his head and readjusted the sheet so that it fit more neatly over Armin’s face. 

            “Just—just pick the best houses.” 

            “Okay,” Armin said, and Eren was glad at the solemn tone in his voice as he accepted this responsibility. Navigation was after all the most important of all Halloween duties. Even with so few of the holidays under his belt, Eren knew that it was all well and good to have a small mountain of candy at the end of the night, but that if all of it was bland or gross or weird pamplets, there'd be more disappointment than anything. If he was going to eat so much candy he got sick, he felt the candy should be worth the stomachache. 

            “With all the lights and everything. And music! Some of them play music.”

            “Alright.”

            “And if anyone jumps out and scares you—”

            Armin waved his hands and made the sheet swish about their ankles.

            “Raaaarghghaa?”

            “Yeah! We’ll scare them back. Only more.”

            Armin laughed a little. That was almost always how he laughed—just a little, just in private. Getting a laugh out of Armin was the highest sort of praise, as far as Eren was concerned. 

            "We're sort of flowery, though," Armin said. "Sorry. We couldn't find a white sheet."

            Eren found Armin's hand again and held on tighter this time. 

            "No, 's okay. The flowers're pretty. We can be pretty and scary." Armin tugged him towards the gate. He gave a faint huff as he started moving, and though Eren couldn't see his face, he was sure he was smiling. 

            “We’ll switch at the end of the street,” Armin said.

            Eren was used to Armin explaining things to him, and he actually kind of liked it. More than once Armin had made Eren certain that rocks and fossils were absolutely the most fun and interesting things in existence. He was sogood at this that now sometimes Eren's heart thudded strangely when he found a new insect to bring to him, and that he'd ask questions about things he'd never card about before, like why 'i' had to go before 'e,' anyway. Even given that, though, Eren could not ever remember having been so happy to be _corrected,_ even inadvertently. It was dark beneath this sheet, and it was hot, and he had no idea where they were going. But Armin was leading him safely along by the hand, and they were going to split their candy, and right now a silly two-headed ghost covered in flower-print was the least boring Halloween costume he could imagine.

**Author's Note:**

> I felt kind of bad about not participating in Eremin week, so I figured I could do something short while I try to get a few longer fics in order. One day I'll publish a multi-chapter fic again, I swear... ;_;


End file.
